Business

Artificial intelligence can increase sales by four times more than inexperienced workers. If a customer is told about the use of artificial intelligence before purchasing, sales drop by nearly 80%. The majority of the problem in using artificial intelligence is customer pushback. Chatbots, which use artificial intelligence to simulate human conversation through voice commands or...

Job sharing offers a route to increase the number of women in senior leadership roles in higher education. Research from Lancaster University Management School, published in a special issue of Social Sciences, shows the potential for job sharing to provide new routes into senior management positions and to increase female presence in the upper echelons of...

Conventional wisdom indicates that market discipline and transparency ensures that financial data of public firms are more reliable for potential investors than financial reports from private companies. Contrary to this widely-held belief, new research from the NYU Stern School of Business, University of Bolzano and Bocconi University finds that when comparing European public firms against...

Hermès’ revenues are on the rise again. The Paris-based luxury brand revealed this week that for the first half of the year, revenues were up 15 percent from the same 6-month period last year to $3.63 billion, while net profit (i.e., dollars earned after subtracting operating expenses, interest, taxes and preferred stock dividends) rose to...

For decades, Walmart solidly held the reins as the largest retailer in the world. The Bentonville, Arkansas-based multinational retail corporation’s competition trailed far behind and it could afford to focus almost exclusively on its roots as a big-box retail chain, selling low-priced staples, such as laundry detergent, paper towels, bottled water, groceries, and even apparel...

New Management Science Study Key Takeaways: Equal ownership — if agreed upon early — attracts low effort personality types and leads to poor performance. Waiting to finalize contracts can improve performance and narrow the effort and value gap between equal and non-equal contracts by more than 60%. Risk tolerance, gender, age and other factors don’t play a...

Researchers from Clemson University and University of Kentucky published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing, which examines several means by which suppliers can enhance their competitiveness when selling to barricaded buyers. The study, forthcoming in the November issue of the Journal of Marketing, is titled “Selling to Barricaded Buyers” and authored by Kevin Chase and...

Researchers from University of Tennessee, IESEG School of Management, and Georgia State University published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that investigates the role of firms’ customer engagement initiatives in social media and analyzes how firms seek to influence digital sentiment by shaping customers’ experiential interactions. The study, forthcoming in the November issue of the Journal...

A flexible schedule is one of the main advantages of freelance work. But don’t rejoice in your freedom just yet: self-employment often disrupts the balance between life and work and takes up more time than traditional office work. HSE University researchers Denis Strebkov and Andrey Shevchuk investigated the downsides of independent work. Disadvantages of the Benefits The advantages of self-employment...

Gucci is going carbon neutral. The Kering-owned brand announced on Thursday that it is upping the ante in its existing decade-long sustainability plan, and confirmed that it will be completely carbon neutral by the end of September. “A new era of corporate accountability is upon us and we need to be diligent in taking all steps...